Subsea fibre-optic cables form the backbone
of the global Internet, connecting countries and continents across vast
trans-oceanic distances. The new services leverage the interconnection of two
existing subsea cable systems – SACS (South Atlantic Cable System) and MONET.
SACS, owned and managed by Angola Cables, operates between Fortaleza, Brazil
and Luanda, Angola and is connected to AngoNAP Datacenter. The consortium-owned
MONET connects Santos/Fortaleza with Florida/USA.

Combining SACS and MONET subsea systems
in this joint trial allows for the first time 300 Gbps of traffic between Miami
and Luanda.

Lower-latency
network connections improve performance and user experience in applications
such as cloud computing and content consumption. According to the ITU, Sub-Saharan
Africa has recorded the highest growth in Internet use globally over the past
decade, from under 10% of the population in 2010, to over 28% in 2019. Enhanced
subsea connectivity is crucial for access to global content and services of
this growing user base.

The subsea wavelengths were deployed
with Nokia’s 1830 Photonic Service Interconnect (PSI) data centre interconnect
(DCI) platform utilising the PSE-3. The 1830 PSI provisioned optical
wavelengths at 300 Gbps using probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) to
optimally shape the signals to the specific characteristics of the 12,635 km
cable, achieve operation near the theoretical limits of the system.

Fernando Azevedo, Technical Director at Angola Cables, said: “With Nokia’s PSE-3, Angola Cables can optically interconnect the MONET and SACS submarine fibre optic cables, enabling more capacity and a further reduction in latency between content providers in North America and the rapidly growing data consumption markets in Africa.”

Sam Bucci, Head of Optical Networking at Nokia, added: “Africa is a strategic growth market for Nokia across both our core CSP and web scale businesses. We are proud to partner with Angola Cables to apply our ground-breaking PSE-3 technology to a unique and challenging subsea route, helping to deliver enhanced services to a rapidly developing part of the world.”

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